Thursday, August 25, 2011

Just a quick thought.
May pen & paper systems have the attribute/detriment systems. (GURPS, Savage Worlds, etc)
What if an MMO (like world of Warcraft) had a detriment were your character could chose to be blind?
I started to think about this the other day. In an unamed WoW clone I am beta testing for, I noticed that during big fights I found myself simply watching the skill cool downs/HP/resource (energy/mana/etc... if I told you the resource I feel like I'd be violating my NDA) bar. As pretty as the graphics are- what if I traded seeing them for something more sureal.

To avoid gimping the character TO much, enemies within a certian distance NPCs/Players could be listed within a certian distance using only their names. (So you could click on them and w/e) Same thing with interactable objects and whatnot.

This obviously wouldn't be a "newbie friendly" mechanic and might play better with someone looking for a more intresting way to play the game. (I'm SURE designers could go nuts with what to do with that!)

Ragnarok Online has an intresting take on this. The skill "Demon of the Sun, Moon, and Stars" (or "Solar, Lunar, and Stellar Shadow" in iRO) actually limits your range of vision to give you statistic upgrades. (Pictured above)

There are plenty of blind characters/mythos that one could use to intergrate into a game. Even Pathfinder has jumped onto this recently (well somewhat recently) with their Oracle class in the Advanced Players Guide. (They take crippling faults to gain mysterious powers)

Just a thought. I know there is the whole "artistic" side of thing and the number of unutalized art assets that cost time and money to create.